Read Online Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Stark
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hires to Canadians.
Established as an outpost nearly a century and a half earlier, in the 1670s, by Jesuit missionaries, Mackinac for a century had served as a major collection point of the Canadian fur trade in the upper Great Lakes. But in the late 1700s, the Canadians or “Northwesters” extended their reach still deeper into North America’s interior across what is today Minnesota, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. By this point, in 1810, their sophisticated system of canoe relays and fur posts threaded for one thousand miles through rivers and lake chains all the way from the western shore of Lake Superior to the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
As it pushed deeper into the continent’s wild interior, the North West Company shifted its regional headquarters from Mackinac Island another three hundred miles westward to Superior’s western shore. Here it established a post at Grand Portage—so named because the voyageurs and fur traders portaged nine miles over Lake Superior’s western bluffs to gain access to the river systems of the continent’s western interior. At Grand Portage, they transferred their trade goods from the huge Montreal canoes to smaller canot du nord, about twenty-five feet long and capable of carrying about three thousand pounds plus paddlers. With one of these smaller canoes, the hivernant and his voyageurs made their way to his remote wilderness post.
While Grand Portage opened the trade to the northern and western wilderness, the old fur post at Mackinac Island remained the hub of the fur trade to the south—what we’d now call the upper Midwest. After long, lonely fall and winter months tending their traplines, these “southwestern” woodsmen, many of them Americans, paddled into Mackinac with pelts to sell, eager for company and with a yen to cut loose—drinking, dancing, singing, whoring, fighting, buying knickknacks and finery from the beach’s shacks and stalls. These Americans were generally independent or freelance contractors compared to the northwestern company men, who considered themselves vastly superior professionals and looked down on this undisciplined southwestern mob that caroused at Mackinac Island, although many voyageurs were present at Mackinac, too.
“Perhaps Satan never reigned with less control in any place than he has here,” wrote one missionary’s wife in 1803 of the Mackinac Island beach scene.
The American woodsmen didn’t even bother with the offer from the earnest, young Mr. Hunt. A whispering campaign rippled among the Mackinac rum shacks that Astor’s was a losing enterprise headed on a death trip into hostile Indian realms and starvation deserts. Even if the rumors weren’t true, to sign the contract Hunt offered on John Jacob Astor’s behalf was a tremendous commitment, even by the standards of today; it would mean handing five years of one’s life to a start-up venture bound for the unknown.
Desperate to hire, Hunt and Mackenzie upped their offer—the recruits, if they wished, could sign for only three years instead of committing to a full five. Finally, on the last day of July 1810, the first Mackinac recruit signed—a French-Canadian voyageur, François Landry. This was a victory of sorts for Hunt and Mackenzie and their Overland Party. Landry might convince some of his fellow French-Canadian voyageurs at Mackinac to join the great Astor enterprise, serving, as one early Astorian chronicler put it, as the “stool-pigeon” to lure in more recruits.
But the voyageurs were cleverer than that. John Jacob Astor had money and Wilson Price Hunt was authorized to spend it and the voyageurs knew it. The voyageurs now stepped forward, in twos and threes, willing to sign on with the stipulation that they receive partial wages in advance.
Hunt agreed.
There were a few other matters, the voyageurs added.
Several claimed they’d already committed to other fur outfits. They needed money to buy out their contracts. Another said that he couldn’t
Established as an outpost nearly a century and a half earlier, in the 1670s, by Jesuit missionaries, Mackinac for a century had served as a major collection point of the Canadian fur trade in the upper Great Lakes. But in the late 1700s, the Canadians or “Northwesters” extended their reach still deeper into North America’s interior across what is today Minnesota, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. By this point, in 1810, their sophisticated system of canoe relays and fur posts threaded for one thousand miles through rivers and lake chains all the way from the western shore of Lake Superior to the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
As it pushed deeper into the continent’s wild interior, the North West Company shifted its regional headquarters from Mackinac Island another three hundred miles westward to Superior’s western shore. Here it established a post at Grand Portage—so named because the voyageurs and fur traders portaged nine miles over Lake Superior’s western bluffs to gain access to the river systems of the continent’s western interior. At Grand Portage, they transferred their trade goods from the huge Montreal canoes to smaller canot du nord, about twenty-five feet long and capable of carrying about three thousand pounds plus paddlers. With one of these smaller canoes, the hivernant and his voyageurs made their way to his remote wilderness post.
While Grand Portage opened the trade to the northern and western wilderness, the old fur post at Mackinac Island remained the hub of the fur trade to the south—what we’d now call the upper Midwest. After long, lonely fall and winter months tending their traplines, these “southwestern” woodsmen, many of them Americans, paddled into Mackinac with pelts to sell, eager for company and with a yen to cut loose—drinking, dancing, singing, whoring, fighting, buying knickknacks and finery from the beach’s shacks and stalls. These Americans were generally independent or freelance contractors compared to the northwestern company men, who considered themselves vastly superior professionals and looked down on this undisciplined southwestern mob that caroused at Mackinac Island, although many voyageurs were present at Mackinac, too.
“Perhaps Satan never reigned with less control in any place than he has here,” wrote one missionary’s wife in 1803 of the Mackinac Island beach scene.
The American woodsmen didn’t even bother with the offer from the earnest, young Mr. Hunt. A whispering campaign rippled among the Mackinac rum shacks that Astor’s was a losing enterprise headed on a death trip into hostile Indian realms and starvation deserts. Even if the rumors weren’t true, to sign the contract Hunt offered on John Jacob Astor’s behalf was a tremendous commitment, even by the standards of today; it would mean handing five years of one’s life to a start-up venture bound for the unknown.
Desperate to hire, Hunt and Mackenzie upped their offer—the recruits, if they wished, could sign for only three years instead of committing to a full five. Finally, on the last day of July 1810, the first Mackinac recruit signed—a French-Canadian voyageur, François Landry. This was a victory of sorts for Hunt and Mackenzie and their Overland Party. Landry might convince some of his fellow French-Canadian voyageurs at Mackinac to join the great Astor enterprise, serving, as one early Astorian chronicler put it, as the “stool-pigeon” to lure in more recruits.
But the voyageurs were cleverer than that. John Jacob Astor had money and Wilson Price Hunt was authorized to spend it and the voyageurs knew it. The voyageurs now stepped forward, in twos and threes, willing to sign on with the stipulation that they receive partial wages in advance.
Hunt agreed.
There were a few other matters, the voyageurs added.
Several claimed they’d already committed to other fur outfits. They needed money to buy out their contracts. Another said that he couldn’t
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